The Stripes Group said Wednesday that it has invested in GoFundMe. Investors including Technology Crossover Ventures, Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, ICONiQ Capital and Meritech also participated. San Diego-based GoFundMe is a crowdfunding site for personal causes.

German travel tech start-up bd4travel has secured $4.2 million in Series A funding. Hoxton Ventures led the round with participation from Talis Capital and Robin Klein of The Accelerator Group. In conjunction with the funding, Simon Breakwell, Expedia founder and a partner at TCV, has been named chairman of the company.

ThinkingPhones said Wednesday it acquired Contactive. Financial terms weren’t announced. New York-based Contactive is an Android call management app that automates the process of Googling phone numbers and names. In December, Technology Crossover Ventures led a $56.7 million Series C round for ThinkingPhones.

This Tuesday morning read all about CalPERS ditching its hedge funds, University of California setting up a VC fund for campus start-ups, Hellman & Friedman VIII’s latest commitment and how Colorado PERA funds are doing.

The market for venture-backed IPOs has been pretty dead so far this year. But based on new filing activity, it looks like there’s some optimism things will improve. At least six venture-backed companies have filed to go public since the start of the year, in sectors ranging from enterprise software to semiconductors to car rentals. […]

Will Griffith has left venture firm Technology Crossover Ventures, peHub has confirmed. Griffith joined the firm in 2000 and became a general partner in 2003. He worked with portfolio companies including 2Wire, Adknowledge, MoneyExpert, Orbitz, Tiny Prints, Travelport and Whitepages. Before joining TCV, Griffith was an associate at The Beacon Group, a private equity firm that was acquired by JP Morgan Chase in 1999. The news was first reported by Fortune.

(Reuters) – Video rental and streaming company Netflix Inc. said late on Monday that it raised $400 million in fresh capital by selling convertible debt to long-time backer Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) and stock to funds managed by T. Rowe Price.

Netflix has lost about two-thirds of its market value since the company’s shares touched a high of almost $300 in July.

The company, which had $159.2 million in cash and cash equivalents at the end of September, has struggled to renegotiate video content deals. It has also lost subscribers and warned of a first-quarter loss.

The $200 million note sale and the $200 million stock sale will help the company replenish its war chest.

Recently, I asked a number of LPs the question: When VCs buy secondary shares in hot companies like Facebook and Twitter, why doesn’t it infuriate them? After all, LPs have historically chosen to invest in VC because it is the only way to gain access to private companies with huge growth potential. The secondary market, on the other hand, provides the same capability to nearly anyone with enough zeros in their bank account. I also asked the LPs why they’re willing to pay management fees for the service, when seemingly, they could invest in the companies directly.

I wound up writing a column on the topic, but I wasn’t able to use much of the feedback of one very thoughtful and high-profile institutional LP, who asked not to be named. For readers interested in the perspective of the LP — an investor in pretty much every so-called top-tier fund –here’s what I was told:

Yesterday, eyebrows across Silicon Valley shot up at the news that Andreessen Horowitz invested $80 million for secondary shares of Twitter. It’s the second time in two months the firm has bet a colossal chunk of its three-month-old, $650 million fund on secondary shares. In November, the firm also acquired what co-founder Ben Horowitz calls a “high volume” […]